Random Government Takedown Demands Point to Need for Policy |
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Tuesday October 09, 2012
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The policy document encourages officials to use the sites "as an efficient and effective additional channel to interact with the public", noting that the Internet offers opportunities for public consultation, recruitment, collaboration, and the provision of government services. The government acknowledges that there are risks, however. These include potential misuse of government content or the possibility of negative perceptions associated with official use. While the document establishes a myriad of rules and guidelines for use of these services, it surprisingly does not consider how to respond to the negative risks. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes the absence of policy direction may be partially to blame for recent revelations of government department demands to Google to remove certain content from its search database or websites. The haphazard manner in which these demands have occurred demonstrate the dangers of proceeding in an ad hoc manner in which officials race to demand the removal of lawful content without uniform policies or guidelines. Yet newly obtained documents under the Access to Information Act indicate that the request was little more than a knee-jerk reaction to an online news story without internal vetting or legal analysis. On September 29, 2011, an article appeared on AmeriQuebec.net, an independent Quebec media site, calling attention to the YouTube video, which was a somewhat vulgar protest against plans to include the Queen’s crown inside pages of Canadian passports. The video had just 21 views at the time, but the reaction within Passport Canada was to immediately contact Department of Justice officials for legal assistance and to express the hope that "we can legally threaten whoever posted it." The following day - before a legal analysis had even been completed - a Passport Canada official filed a takedown notice with YouTube, listing the violating law as "a Canadian citizen urinates on his Canadian passport before disposing the travel document down the toilet." While the case might be excused on the grounds that it involved an isolated incident and an overzealous official, a recent request for all Google-related government takedown requests by Lise St-Denis, a Liberal Member of Parliament, confirmed that Fisheries Canada also had a 2011 takedown request rejected by Google (other copyright related demands from the National Film Board and Public Service Commission have succeeded). Moreover, earlier this year, Transport Canada issued a takedown demand to Scribd.com over the posting of an on-the-record response it provided to a journalist, while the Department of National Defence sought the removal of a leaked government document that had widely circulated for several years. There may be legitimate reasons for some of the takedowns, particularly those involving inadvertent disclosures of personal information due to incorrect search engine settings, yet the absence of a government-wide policy on takedowns demands that fully respects free speech rights is a cause for concern. The government’s decision to embrace Web 2.0 is welcome, but a more balanced plan to address risks might help prevent future legally questionable takedown demands. Comments (7)
Albin
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No government bureaucrat ever lost a promotion for blacking out too much public documentation. An interesting Dvorak piece in PC Mag today about a Microsoft web crawler robotically issuing takedown notices that Google, etc. robotically comply with, without any human intervention at all. |
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... I can understand Passport Canada being peeved and wanting to stop the flow of people protesting in this way but it looks like they just created a swirl instead. |
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Risks The biggest risk to the current government is rogue civil servants wanting to post facts. |
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I can see a legitimate need for some of the takedown notices in addition to what is described above. For instance, if someone posts draft versions of policy documents. By this I mean that if someone uses the draft, and the final, official, version describes something else, then to me it makes sense that the draft be taken down simply to reduce the public confusion (especially if the draft is not marked as such). I've actually seen media reports of speeches by ministers where the journalist was not present at the event and published a report based on a draft of the speech (this occurred about 4 months ago). Given how long it can take to get things through an ATI request, one has to wonder at how much had changed in the speech text between the writing of the draft and when the speech was actually delivered. |
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www.theshoessaler.com What www.theshoessaler.com is behind the decline in living standards? |
We want to enhance competition and investment in this country, and this is why we adopted this policy back in 2008 for the AWS spectrum. Let me say that the price went down by an average of 11% since then, and we will continue this way with the 700 megahertz spectrum. We launched consultation with the industry to make sure that we enhance competition and provide better choice and better rates for our consumers.
Last week I wrote about the National Post seeking $150 licences for posting short excerpts online. It appears that the paper has now dropped the system.
Mar.12/13Comments (1)
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